I Withdraw
by LonelyHeart101
Summary: ...the aftermath of 'Getting Over You'... Sirius starts telling the truth, Raisa attempts to get even, and Lily is still yelling at James. Sirius/OC, Lily/James
1. dé·jà vu

**Disclaimer: **I definitely do not own these characters and everything is for the sake of entertainment only. Title is a quote from Vanity Fair, so evidently I do not own that either.

Hi guys. I know it's been a while since the end of Getting Over You and the start of this so I hope I haven't lost anyone's interest - I'm gonna be really cheeky and use revising for major exams as an excuse!! Anyways, this is gonna be the start of some transitional stuff before the sequel. I finally have some vague idea of where I want to go with this now, so enjoy (hopefully!) and please review when done ;)

btw, anyone who hasn't read Getting Over You, just to warn you this might not make a lot of sense!

**I Withdraw Part 1: Dé·jà Vu**

"JAMES POTTER, GET YOUR CUTE BACKSIDE DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!!"

Bleary eyed and yawning copiously, the aforementioned tripped his way down the dormitory stairs in a state of utter confusion. James had been under the impression that once he started to date Lily Evans the yelling would stop. Evidently he had been sorely mistaken.

"Lily, what the hell? "James croaked, when on finishing his descent of the stairs he was accosted by a number of pointed jabs to his chest.

Frantically he tried to think back through the past twenty four hours to remember if he had done anything stupid, however in a very rare instance for James Potter, he couldn't actually pinpoint a single thing. He was, however, assailed by the brief and highly worrying thought that the events of the past few days in which the object of his desire had actually become his object were nothing more than a really vivid daydream.

The red head tossed her hair and let out a pointed "harrumph", almost as though it was a character flaw on her boyfriend's part that he was unable to read her mind.

"Lily, seriously," James yelped. "You're really lucky that I'm such an understanding boyfriend."

"Well _you're _lucky that Sirius Black is currently not within my hitting range," Lily spat, alarming James somewhat with the venom of her words.

He winced, not looking forward to forcing this issue but feeling that if his relationship with Lily was to progress further then it was important to bring to the fore that he was _not_ a glorified punch bag.

"Muffin," he began. "Just a thought here, but if you're mad at Sirius then why are you hitting _me_?"

Lily turned a little red as James' words hit home and she sat down with a thump on a nearby armchair. He did have an excellent point – after their time spent in the Hospital Wing she had vowed to try and curb her slightly insane temper. This particular incident could possibly be used as evidence that her attempts were falling some way short.

James moved towards Lily and pulled her head softly towards his chest, stroking her hair soothingly.

"Come on, whatever Padfoot's done can't be that bad," he assured her consolingly. Inwardly however, James was severely doubting the veracity of his words.

Lily looked up at him with wide eyes. "How about kissing Raisa and then grossly fabricating some crap about a prophecy to get round the fact that he's not ready to commit to someone?"

"Oh," James abruptly turned his gaze to the floor.

Lily frowned. "Oh? What kind of a response is oh?"

James continued to stare intently at the floor, as though he might find the meaning of life by staring into its pine depths.

Lily continued to chew over in her head a thought that was now beginning to bother her before letting a sharp cry of anger:

"You knew!"

James returned his gaze to Lily slowly, trying to prolong the last remaining moments of his girlfriend not being really furious with him.

"I wouldn't put it like that," he protested futilely. "I would phrase it more like, I didn't _not_ know..."

Lily arched her eyebrows caustically. 'James Potter - Master of Words' was proving cold comfort right now to Raisa's distress.

Fine," James eventually sighed. "Sirius will kill me for telling you this though."

Lily arched her eyebrows higher and James nodded resignedly before her eyebrows disappeared up into her forehead: "But _you_ will kill me if I don't."

He settled back on the sofa and pulled his girlfriend closer to his chest, as if about to embark on a story time session.

"So, and the end of third year we come out of one of the mad old bat Trelawney's lessons and Sirius leaves his quill behind. Moony insists he go back for it and being the good friends that we are we wait for him on the landing. Five minutes later he runs out white as a sheet and babbling incoherently about love, death and some prophecy."

Lily looked unimpressed. "Of course, because that sounds exactly like something Sirius Black would do," she deadpanned.

James shrugged. "I probably wouldn't have believed it unless I had seen it but I promise you Lily that I'm telling the absolute truth here."

"So what you're basically saying is that Sirius messing with Rai's head is acceptable behaviour all because he believes in fairytales?" Lily retorted, still more focused on the fact that Sirius Black had hurt her friend rather than her boyfriend's attempt at honesty.

"Well muggles don't believe that _we_ exist but we do" James pointed out rather reasonably.

Lily slumped into her boyfriend's chest, defeated by his amazing powers of logic. "Well why didn't you tell me any of this before?"

"Lily..." James hesitated, wondering how to phrase his response tactfully. "I love you very much, but until about a week ago my main focus in conversing with you was trying to make sure you didn't hit me. Spilling secrets was really not so high on my agenda."

She nodded, sheepish.

"And I guess that we've been a little too focused on ourselves lately," he continued.

"So what exactly does this prophecy say?" Lily inquired conversationally.

"Well the thing is Muffin," James began, involuntarily inching further and further down the sofa because he had a feeling that once he finished his sentence it would be a very good idea to be as far away as possible from his girlfriend's fist. "He's never actually told us the precise wording."

Lily clenched her fists, and jumped up from her perch on James' lap with a start.

"Is that right?" she questioned grimly.

"You now don't believe me, do you?" James sunk further back into the sofa as he started to realise that the actions of his friend had now dug him into a monumental hole.

The red head kept her mouth clamped shut so as not to say something she might regret, instead settling for an icy glare and storming out of the Common Room.

Several seconds later she stormed her way back and up to her dormitory in on realising that she was clad only in pyjamas and it was the middle of the night.

* * *

Please review :))


	2. il·lu·sion

**Disclaimer: **I definitely do not own these characters and everything is for the sake of entertainment only. Title also not mine.

Read, review and (hopefully!) enjoy ;)

**I Withdraw Part 2: Il·lu·sion**

"So, let me just clarify the situation here Padfoot..." Remus began, with a certain sense of doom. "You kissed Raisa, then proceeded to avoid her and then kissed her again, before telling her that if the two of you continued to kiss then she was more than likely going to die."

"That's about the sum of it," Sirius replied warily, wondering why Remus seemed to have an innate ability to make the situation sound so much terrible than he had managed to convince himself.

Remus frowned at his friend. "And still, you find it shocking that she resorted to physical violence?"

"Okay," Sirius snapped. "Maybe she had every right to hit me but I was actually trying to protect her."

Remus opened his mouth to reply but was beaten to it by the rather angry voice of James Potter: "Didn't do you much good, did it?"

Both Remus and Sirius nodded in greeting as James grimly took a seat next to them.

"Fallen out with your girlfriend already?" Sirius asked jokingly, choosing to ignore James' thundery expression and simply be thankful that this was an opportunity for attention to be deflected away from him.

"This. Is. All. Your. Fault," James replied through clenched teeth, taking a leaf out of Lily's book and holding in his anger.

"Funny you should say that..." Sirius remarked conversationally. "...because me and Remus were just establishing that everything is in fact my fault, right down to world hunger and the common cold."

Remus exhaled noisily: "That's not what I said Sirius."

James gave Remus a look which suggested that even if Remus had not voiced the above then perhaps he really should have done, before scowling again in Sirius' direction:

"Your little bout of honesty might have cost me my future wife."

"I warned him," Remus interjected, fighting the feeling that sometimes there was really no point in even opening his mouth.

Where most things were concerned Sirius Black was selectively deaf; after almost six years in his company Remus was becoming more and more painfully aware of this fact. Although having said that, the same could be said of a certain Raisa Ramsey.

"Like hell you warned me Moony," Sirius retorted, tracing angry lines in the dirt with his shoe.

"When it comes to things connected to love and death Raisa can be a little sensitive," Remus continued in infuriatingly measured tones. "And that is what I told you."

Sirius scoffed: "Sensitive? Moony, in what universe can delicate and sensitive be even remotely considered as the same?"

"I was trying to be tactful," Remus protested, ruing that both Sirius and James had a way of perpetually turning round arguments so that anyone but them was at fault.

Sirius fixed Remus with a withering stare, all the while wishing that some of his friend's tact had rubbed off on him - a tactful guy would have found a better way to break his secret to Raisa than accosting her on a staircase and kissing her senseless.

Unfortunately though, it just wasn't in his nature to think before he acted.

Unfortunately too, he was completely certain that having to hurt Rai was for all the right reasons.

"When are you going to stop letting this 'supposed' prophecy rule your life?" James cut in. He was highly tempted to add "and rule the lives of your friends" to the end of the sentence, but didn't due to a sneaking suspicion that it might sound selfish.

"Stop with the air quotes," protested Sirius with a brooding scowl.

"Until we see some evidence that it's anything more than a figment of your overactive imagination, the air quotes will continue," James retorted smartly.

Unable to think up a witty enough retort to this Sirius fell silent.

Did James not think that he'd wondered constantly whether it was all just a product of his imagination? It would definitely make his life a whole lot easier if he didn't have to guard his heart against the slightest sign of affection.

"You know, Lily thinks that you're using this as an elaborate excuse to avoid commitment," James piped up when the gap caused by noone talking had become too much for him to handle.

"You told Evans?" Sirius yelped, appalled at James' apparently very loose tongue.

James shrugged. "She tends to yell at me if I don't tell her things and, besides, she heard most of it from Raisa anyway."

Sirius flinched involuntarily at the mention of _her _name.

"You don't – erm – tell Lily _everything_, do you?" Remus muttered inconspicuously into James' ear, evidently with his lycanthropic activities in mind.

"Of course not Moony," James assured. "It's not my secret to tell...but obviously please don't tell Lily I said that."

The pair exchanged eyes gratefully while Sirius let out a snort of derision.

"As much as I hate to break up the male bonding, last time I checked the prophecy was not exactly your secret to tell either," he snapped, feeling now as though the whole entire world was out to get him.

"You were the one who told Raisa though," Remus pointed out.

"Yeah, actually can I just ask something?" James spoke up here, having been pondering something over in his mind for the last few seconds.

Sirius looked up at him in annoyance: "No."

James continued regardless - "How do you if Rai's the girl from the 'prophecy'? How can you be so sure that you love her?"

"I've had enough of this," Sirius sighed, pulling himself up from his seat on the grass and standing above his two supposed friends.

"There is a prophecy. I fall in love with a girl and it will lead to her death. Professor Trelawney said it. My uncle said it. The book said it. I could see myself falling for Raisa and I don't want to put her in the firing line. That is how it is. End of story."

"Wait a second," Remus held up a hand to stop Sirius from storming off. "You never mention anything to us about an uncle or a book."

Sirius swallowed thickly. Yup, a slight drawback of trying so hard to protect everyone was that sooner or later it caught up with you and sometimes people did not take so kindly to being protected from the truth...

* * *


	3. flash·back

**Disclaimer: **I definitely do not own these characters and everything is for the sake of entertainment only.

Tiny, tiny chapter I know... I just wanted to post something to let you guys know that i haven't dropped off the face of the earth! There's a longer note in my profile explaining why I haven't been able to write for this month and a half. Hopefully things are moving towards being back on track with me writing though and I should be posting more regularly now... ; )

**I Withdraw Part 3: Flash·back**

_At eight years and three months old, Sirius Black was rather amazed to find that deep in the dusty recesses of the Black family library was a book with his name in it..._

Of course, when he reached the ripe old age of nine he figured out that he was not the only person on the planet with that particular moniker, and as such the Sirius Black in the book was unlikely to be connected with him.

Everything seemed so much simpler somehow when seen through the eyes of a nine year old child...

_At twelve years and eight months old, Sirius Black became aware of fractured conversations between his parents and the fact that they seemed to like Regalus more than him._

It was silly things: giving the younger of the pair an extra potato at dinner and the like. Sirius didn't much care for potatoes unless they were of the French fry variety, but it was the principle of the matter. He was the oldest and therefore should be allocated more potatoes.

Anyhow, it all began to make a lot more sense when seen in conjunction with what the book said...

_Two days before his fifteenth birthday Professor Trelawney scared the living crap out of him by repeating the words of the book practically word for word. Three days after that he had The Talk with his Uncle Alphard where the truth spilled out in all it's raw, ghoulish glory._

There was a prophecy it seemed, and Sirius Black was a marked man.


	4. an·swers

**Disclaimer: **I definitely do not own these characters and everything is for the sake of entertainment only.

Please read and review ; )

**I Withdraw Part 4: A****n·swers**

"So let me get this straight," James began, blinking owlishly, as though waking up from long and disturbing dream. "Your great-great Aunt got wiped from the Black Family Tree for marrying a muggle, had an angry psychic moment before she left, there is now a book that tells the futures of all the generations of the Black family, and they seem to have a funny knack of coming true..."

Sirius nodded glumly. "That's about the sum of it."

"Wow," James commented. "And I thought I had it rough trying to get Lily to go out with me."

The three Marauders sat in silence leaning against a tree trunk at the edge of the Forbidden Forest and contemplated the relative similarities and differences between Lily Evans and Sirius' mad dead (not so) great-great aunt.

"Padfoot, I have to ask..." began Remus, breaking the silence in the ominous tone of voice adopted by persons all across the world who are trying to sugar-coat something that their listener may not want to hear. "If all this is true, what on earth made you think it was even remotely a good idea to pursue Raisa?"

Sirius winced, and began to stare intently at a tuft of interesting shaped grass. He hadn't wanted to venture into that territory yet – it was still too raw...

And 'pursue' was such a derogatory word.

"Glaring at the topiary is not an answer," scolded Remus, on seeing that his friend had absolutely no intention of answering the pertinent question.

"This is just typical Sirius behaviour," Remus continued, taking the dog-starred one's lack of words as permission to go on yelling at him. "I tell you not to do something and what do you do? You go right ahead and do it anyway. Sirius Black: always thinks he knows best about everything – "

Remus would have probably continued for a great deal longer in full on parental mode had James not cut him off here.

"Come on Remus, lay off him a bit," the bespectacled one pleaded, touched by the pain he saw etched in Sirius' eyes...and also the fact that Remus was beginning to remind him of his mother.

Remus looked at Sirius sheepishly, now realising that he had quite some time ago crossed the line between being a friend and being a nag.

He hastily tried to justify himself - "It's just that _I_ told you about my ...ahem...secret,"

"In all fairness, Moony," James interceded. "You weren't exactly falling over yourself to reveal that information to us – the three of us followed you out the Whomping Willow one night and saw it."

Sirius shot James a grateful smile as Remus nodded dejectedly in agreement, watching his argument fall apart. Yes, he certainly did understand the burden that came with having a secret.

Here James seemed to sense the relaxing of Sirius' shoulders and now turned to face him sharply.

"Oh, you are not getting off so easy Sirius Black," he snapped, now rounding on his friend too. "Obviously you are my best friend, but do you have any idea how much trouble your little stunt got me into with Lily?"

Sirius let out a bark-like laugh. "Well that's just great. Thank you very much James. I feel so loved."

"About as loved as Raisa is feeling right now?" James countered. Remus' anger was now apparently infectious and consequently James was now imbued with a certain sense of protectiveness towards Raisa. "You really screwed up, didn't you Padfoot?"

Sirius rolled his eyes at James' statement of the patently obvious.

"Look," he stood up sharply. "I didn't know she was the girl from the prophecy until after I kissed her, otherwise I wouldn't have kissed her..." he trailed off on realising how utterly pathetic that sounded.

"So what were you planning on doing, Sirius?" Remus questioned. "Kissing every female at Hogwarts in the hope that something would eventually click and you would find the girl from the prophecy?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. He was well aware that the anti-Prince Charming frog kissing scenario would not come into play here. Kissing Raisa was rather nice though...

"Oh, God," James moaned, "Please don't have a flashback of snogging Raisa in our presence."

"Why not?" Sirius snapped, going a little red. "You do it often enough with Lily."

"Padfoot, we don't want to judge you – we are just trying to understand," Remus sighed, attempting to rescue the conversation from it's rapid descent into madness. "We are your friends and we want to help you."

Sirius exhaled slowly... "I love her."

Remus was right. He knew that Remus was right, but it was still really, really hard.

What was also really hard was watching the look of stunned incredulity passing across James' features at that moment.

"Brilliant," James exclaimed, slapping his knees for dramatic effect. "Love as an excuse for everything – so original."

Sirius massaged his temples wearily and wondered at exactly what point the conversation had begun to slide rapidly out of his grasp.

"Padfoot, why did you kiss her despite knowing you could never be with her?" Remus asked sensibly, rephrasing James' initial question in a less antagonistic manner.

"The way I saw it, Remus, it seemed preferable to kissing _you_," Sirius retorted, somewhat flustered at way Remus' line of questioning was scarily mirroring his own thoughts.

"Do elaborate," Remus deadpanned, straight faced.

"I wanted to feel _something_...with..._someone_," Sirius replied, the flicker of a smile on his face as he reran a moving picture show of love in its truest form that had been playing over and over in his head ever since the he had begun to face the fact that it may never truly be his. "I want that glow of excitement in my stomach on seeing her walk into a room, I want that absolute openness with someone – that feeling that you can tell someone absolutely everything about yourself and they won't ever judge you. Surely you can both understand that," Sirius finished, surveying his friends pleadingly.

Remus and James shared a covert look of hidden sadness for their friend -

Sirius Black was a marked man, and there was nothing he could do about it...


	5. con·tem·pla·tion

**Disclaimer: **I definitely do not own these characters and everything is for the sake of entertainment only.

**Hello there! This is the final chapter of this little mini-story, so please read review and enjoy ; )**

**I Withdraw Part 5: C****on·tem·pla·tion**

"Boo!"

Sirius Black jumped about five feet in the air, interrupted abruptly from his musing by the loud, shrill voice. He pursed his lips and prepared to scold the person who was in his eyes (no pun intended) the likely culprit: "God Prongs, did you really have to do that?"

The distinctly feminine sounding voice presumably belonging to the hands covering his eyes laughed a very un-James like laugh, which caused Sirius' heart to sink. He recognised that laugh and could confidently say at this point that he would actually rather it be James seductively impeding his vision. No such luck.

"Would James do this?" murmured Raisa Ramsey before capturing his lips in a bruising kiss...

* * *

Of course, he had gathered that he could not avoid Raisa forever. They both went to the same school and jumping behind suits of armour every time she rounded a corner would just not be practical.

Sirius detatched himself hurriedly from Raisa's warm and inviting lips and fixed her with an angry stare. It was more of an angry stare directed towards himself, but since it was biologically impossible to stare at yourself unless you carry a mirror about, the anger ended up projected in Raisa's general direction.

"What? So you're the only one who can go around randomly kissing people then?" Raisa retorted, incredulous because no one likes to kiss someone and have them pull away and glare.

Sirius sighed, and gazed longingly at the chaotic mess now confronting him. She did not look as though she had slept in a week and perversely, Raisa had never looked so attractive to him. He had spent many nights lying awake in bed and hating his great-great aunt, and this was turning out to be another such moment.

"You have to go," he affirmed, gritting his teeth in an attempt to ignore the hurt look now gracing Raisa's features.

"Go?" she replied steadily. "But I want to hear all about this prophecy that is supposedly going to kill me."

Raisa stood facing him, feet planted evenly on the ground. Several days of blind rage had now abated and Raisa had now reached a state of numb tranquillity, where nothing short of a herd of stampeding elephants would in any way bother her.

"You believe me now?" Sirius questioned, slightly put out that it took him being kneed in his man area for her to take him seriously.

"Of course," she affirmed with an evil smile. "I don't credit you with the imagination to make something like this up."

Sirius fixed her with a withering stare. "I see that your sense of humour is still intact," he deadpanned.

"Unlike my pride and my dignity and my feelings," Raisa listed, counting off on her fingers the many, many things that had fallen by the wayside on account of Sirius Black. "The way I see it, since this prophecy thing involves me then I deserve to know what it entails,."

Sirius spluttered at this relative onslaught. "No!"

"Why not?" Raisa frowned, biting back a certain sense of relief at his resistance. Although she would never admit to it, a large part of her was actually quite terrified at hearing the full extent of Sirius' secret. Of course, her own secrets she could control...but the thought of her life being in the hands of Sirius Black was a very scary prospect indeed.

"You know what, Black?" she spat. "I think that you just like the drama of all this. Sirius Black: always centre of attention."

"You should start a club with Moony," Sirius remarked conversationally, thinking back with a wince to his earlier conversation with Remus Lupin: always quick to label people.

Raisa clenched her fists and tried to control her breathing. "Look Sirius ... please just tell me truth, for once."

"Okay then," Sirius murmured, rubbing his palms together as though limbering up for a very important race... "I'm in love with you."

"Oh come on," Raisa snapped, ignoring the tingle that shot up her spine at his words. "We're seventeen years old – people don't find that at seventeen, it just doesn't happen."

"Look at James and Lily," Sirius retorted, temporarily forgetting that he was actually meant to be burying his feelings and not defending them.

"James and Lily aren't a normal case," Raisa argued, shaking her head at Sirius' somewhat short-sighted use of Hogwarts' super-couple as an example. "We, on the other hand are two very normal people and you cannot just _dump_ all of this on me with no warning at all. It's not fair."

Sirius laughed grimly. "Would you really have taken it any better _with _warning?"

It was a fair point, but Raisa was not prepared to give him any ground. "This is still your fault," she maintained, although this time it sounded a little feeble.

"Rai..." Sirius began, reaching over to grab her hand in an effort to bring her closer towards him.

"No," she snapped, cutting him off in mid-flow. "Y_ou_ have been completely stringing me along. Did it not occur to you at all while you had your tongue down my throat that just maybe it might be a good time to mention that it could KILL ME?"

"I didn't know you were the girl from the prophecy until after I'd kissed you," protested Sirius. "Don't laugh, but I...I saw it in a dream."

Raisa's breath caught in her throat. Yes, seeing things in dreams was definitely something she could relate to.

"Oh God," she moaned. "You really are serious, aren't you?"

Sirius nodded slowly, choosing to ignore her unintentional pun. This was going to hurt like hell...

"If we continue to see each other then something will happen to you, and I can't have that on my conscience because I care about you too much," he spoke softly here.

"I know I'm right," affirmed firmly. "It breaks my heart to say this...but we can never ever be together."

There was a strained silence between the pair as both replayed the all too vivid memory of their final kiss. The two of them cut a forlorn sight, staring blankly into space.

"Where does that leave us then?" Raisa murmured, shivering slightly in the cold early evening breeze.

"We are classmates, and you are still terrible at Defence against the Dark Arts," Sirius answered sadly, attempting to inject a little feeble humour into proceedings.

Raisa smiled weakly. "Okay." If he was being brave about it then so would she.

He leant over and kissed her carefully on the forehead: "See you around, Ramsey."

"Later, Black," she whispered, gently raising a hand to her forehead in order to touch the last place on her body that Sirius Black's lips had touched.

* * *

**Okay, so I wanted to get this last chapter up because I'm going on holiday tomorrow and so probably won't be able to post now for two weeks ( However, I will take my trusty notebook and pen and make a start on writing the proper sequel to 'Getting Over You'. Sequel will be called 'Getting Through To You' and will be mainly Rai/Sirius centric, but with a good dose of Lily/James thrown in too. There will be a return to (dark) comedy, Lily will have to adjust to being a good girlfriend, Peter will be back with his winter vegetables and Raisa's skeletons will begin to come tumbling out of her large and dusty closet... (!!) **

**So, am really, really excited about writing the sequel, and goodbye until September ... !! ; )**


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